


Welcome to the Jungle

by Hippediva



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Reality, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-02-21
Updated: 2010-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-08 12:24:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hippediva/pseuds/Hippediva





	1. The Dom, The Freak, The Bar and Its Owner

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
**Current mood:** |   
accomplished  
---|---  
**Entry tags:** |  [fiction](http://hippediva.livejournal.com/tag/fiction)  
  
_**FIC: Welcome to the Jungle Ch 1: The Dom, The Freak, The Bar and its Owner**_  
TITLE: **Welcome to the Jungle **Chapter One: The Dom, the Freak, the Bar and its Owner  
DISCLAIMER: CM belongs to those guys at CBS. I own nothing. All characters revert to canon  
RATING: R through NC-17  
PAIRINGS:...Prentiss/Hotchner, Hotchner/JJ, JJ/Garcia, Garcia/Lynch, Prentiss/Garcia, Reid/Morgan, Morgan/Prentiss, Reid/Hotchner, Rossi/Strauss, Tobias Hankel/Reid, Frank/Prentiss, Morgan/JJ, (do you want me to go on or would it be easier to list the pairings that aren't?)

This is an ALTERNATE REALITY fiction! Canon has been fed through the Fargo wood-chipper, is being reflected in funhouse mirrors, and narrated by a chorus of Timothy Leary devotees.

_Enter my spider's web, little chickies. All here is for your pleasure and what doesn't pleasure you, pass on to the next perv._

PandaGal here catching you all up on the RL weirdness that exists right outside your door. Keep tuned in, stay tuned up or we'll send someone out to do it for you.

FYI, Miss Em's Crewe has relocated from the swamps and have taken up new quarters. Check the gallery for the latest Whips and Chains and Tidbits of Torture. Come on, you silly subs, you know you want it. And just to spice things up, next Friday's webcast will feature our very own slaveboy Kevin who will get a paddling for every hit the gallery gets. So rack 'em up, kiddies! We want that boy to scream. Plus Miss Em will have a special guest sub in tow. No spoilers, you rotten scum! You can all lick my shiny pink patent-leather boots and tune in for our grand reopening. ROFLMAOASTS!

As always, Miss Em passes along her fondest fondles for all her personal correspondents. Messages for this week are:

\---Howard, you're a duck. Don't get your wings clipped.

\---xxLestatxx295780, bite my ass.

\---Frank, you have my attention. Which body parts and whose?

That's all for today, sweetcheeks. May we meet again in different circumstances.

Yours with restraints, TTFN

PG the Cyberpanda

She hit send just before the power blew. Again.

"Dammit to hell! This dump is gonna wreck all my equipment!"

Her wailing roused Kevin, who'd been sleeping off Ms. Em's attentions in his corner.

It wasn't surprising that the power had blown: there were only two plugs per room in the crumbling 4-story brick building. Further inspection proved much too traumatising for Penelope. She curled up in her deluxe chair, pink-tipped fingers quivering over one keyboard.

"I'll take care of it." Kevin shoved his way around one bank of monitors.

"I don't know why she had to come here. Of all places. Richmond. It's not even a city! It's---it's ----it's dialup. Who goes to Richmond for shits and giggles? Honestly, I'm so much better than this. I deserve so much more. I'm talented. I have Mad Skillz. Trademarked. What karma am I reaping!?"

He crawled behind console #1 to check the power strips. "Did you know there's a windowseat back here?"

"Kevin, do not try my patience today! I have sixteen webfeeds to keep running if we are going to make a dime and we've got cloth wires. Do her clients even know where Richmond is? Does anyone?"

"Trainspotters."

Both looked up like startled geese. Her pigtails quivered.

Their landlord's low tone was, as always, menacing. Penelope rolled her chair back.

"I came up to tell you the power will be off for about an hour." His glance raked past her toward the console. "His diaper's slipping." For another moment, he loomed in the doorway, then stomped down the two flights to his bar.

Kevin peaked out from behind the tall shelves, strangling a grin. "Why do you let him scare you?"

Garcia shuddered. "I'm not sure. He's...creepy."

"Goodlooking."

"Creepy goodlooking. And dangerous. I'm always wondering how long it'll be before he thinks it's better to ....I dunno. He creeps me out."

Kevin's navel was just about even with her cat's eye rhinestones. "Says the women who lives in a cyberworld and loves a man in a diaper."

"That's different."

"Mmmmm."

Kevin's 'leash' (set by Ms. Em but Kevin knew his knots as well as any Boy Scout) trailed behind them towards the hidden windowseat.

"Kev?"

"What?"

"Lock the door."

The windowseat's ancient timbers squeaked like a pen of dying rabbits.

"Probably why he boarded up the window!" Penelope gasped, just before Kevin's tongue made it quite impossible to speak.

Down the hall, Mistress Emily Prentiss adjusted her earplugs and rolled over for another hour's sleep. She'd had a long night, her shoulders ached and she was looking forward to Kevin's massage when she woke. After Garcia got the site back up, which, judging by the thumping and squeaking, would likely take a bit longer than usual. The earplugs mercifully drowned out her own snoring and she dreamed of kittens gamboling through crayon-coloured fields.

**Yeah, some called me garbage  
While I was sleeping on the street  
I never roll  
And I never cheat  
I'm filling a need  
I'm plugging a hole  
My mama's so glad  
I ain't on the dole**

When the whip comes down  
When the whip comes down

M. Jagger, K. Richards "When the Whip Comes Down"

Exactly a half-hour earlier, the Acca trainyard bar had been vibrating with booming bass.

"TURN THAT GODDAMNED THING DOWN!"

The ear-shattering volume from the attic subsided at once but Aaron Hotchner had a hangover and it was never a good idea to provoke him. He'd been up for hours because he simply could not behave like a normal thug and sleep it off. He had to 'use' the energy, which generally meant either he was beating some poor slob senseless or using his monster F-250 as a tank.

This morning he took the stairs two at a time to the attic, put its occupant in a choke hold and repeatedly punched him in the ribs until he whimpered.

"I'm sorry! Sorry sorry sorry."

Spencer Reid wasn't really all that sorry: another punch-out would give him jackoff fantasies for a week. It was as close as he'd ever get to thanking his hero the way he wanted.

At 22, Reid looked a decade younger, wore coke-bottle glasses when he wanted to see and worshipped Hotch with a wistful intensity that was almost equalled by his relationship with heroin. He could reproduce nearly any pharmaceutical compound using a Junior Nye Chemistry Set and reportedly gave the best blow job east of the Mississippi. Hotchner had 'liberated' him from his last employer after a deal went sour by the expedient measure of driving his truck through the building and over said employer. He parked long enough to strong-arm Reid into the back and terrorised him over two states' worth of bad roads.

Reid, the deeply disturbed product of a lunatic and a Las Vegas loser, was charmed. He settled happily into the attic with his ever-growing library of stolen books, amid the buckets that were necessary to catch any precipitation.

Nursing his ribs on the soggy mattress, he decided against jerking off: it was pointless when he was using. His dick would either give up or give out. Besides, Hotch would eventually come up with a dime bag as an apology. He yanked at his grubby tee shirt, sniffing where it had been plastered between his skinny back and Hotch's chest, rolled onto one side and let himself dream a while longer.

His hangover burned off, Hotch stomped back down to the cellar, grabbing the miner's helmet on his way down. He never wasted breath on unnecessary speech even with himself. Miss Em's new dungeon was costing him more in electricity than Garcia's labyrinth of computers, the bar and the garage. He wasn't surprised to find the current had been highjacked again. He cut the feed and patched up the circuit board with his usual efficiency.

It was eleven am and three of his regulars were already waiting for the Rotgut Roll call when he squeaked open the door.

Gideon was planted at the end of the bar, face-down in a basket of pretzels.

"How'd he get in here?" Fat Louie was still slurring last night's bourbon.

Hotch shrugged and poured breakfast. Jason Gideon had been hanging around the trainyard for years. No one quite knew why, but Aaron suspected he just liked the 'choo-choo's'. At least that's what he seemed to coo in his continual stupor. There were times Gideon made sense; he and Reid had long philosophical discussions. Spencer liked company when he was in the garage cooking up a new batch of methamphetamine and Gideon was perfectly content with a bottle of Wild Turkey and an audience. Hotch made sure to avoid them both during cooks. They irritated him almost as much as his once-a-month call to his baby brother way up north in Attica.

He slammed back his own version of a pop-tart: exactly one pony of Jack Daniels. Any more would have been self-indulgent and Mama wouldn't have approved. She'd been dead for twenty years, but Aaron never forgot Mama. Whether or not he actually said goodnight to her picture, pasted next to the faded Pink Floyd poster across from his bed was not known.

He paused, staring at himself between the letters of a Budweiser mirror. Not too puffy around the gills.

One switch and Tesla's one and only hit lp made the tin signs on the walls quiver. Later on, he'd see about jacking the NASCAR cable feed. At the moment, the dishwasher was more important.

Hotchner had a skewed but acute sense of rhythm and Jason Gideon, mid-gulp, grinned at him. The old 80's heavy metal jived perfectly with the dishwasher's knocking and pinging.

"Backbeat, Aaron?"

The returning grin was surprisingly boyish. "Keeps things in order."

Conversations at the bar were usually short. The 11:23 Northbound Passenger local screamed its arrival down the yard and only the pretzels could hear whatever Gideon went on about next. He finished just as the 11:28 Eastbound Freight bellowed its departure.

That was the normal daytime pace: three sentences, two drinks, four trains and a siren. Repeat, stir. Add ice.

Hotchner tossed Gideon another beer and refilled Fat Louie's glass without comment.

At 12:01, just after the noon siren had rendered the entire trainyard and its adjacent neighborhoods temporarily deaf, the door slammed open.

"Where is he, Hotchner?"

He didn't hear her. Or pretended not to hear her. That was more infuriating than anything else because it spoiled her entrance.

Erin Rossi Pinzicelli-Jones Rossi nee Strauss (to be technical) hated having an entrance ruined, even in Richmond, VA, which was as close as her double-ex'd husband could get his sorry self to Atlantic City.

"Where is he?"

Hotch was almost glad he really was a bit deaf in his one ear. "Nice to see you, ma'am." The lingering drawl was as deliberate as his wink.

"I swear, Aaron, I'm gonna take him down and you with him. Who's he shacking up with this time? I just got declined at BLOOMINGDALES."

Gideon took cover in the men's room. Fat Louie retreated to a booth.

Hotchner's voice became rum and Southern Comfort, laced with molasses. "Erin, I don't know where he is. Sit down and stop yelling. Nice shoes."

She pushed back a stray strand of expensively-frosted hair. "Aren't they?" Then her eyes started blazing again. "I'll get another lawyer. I swear I will. I'll go to the Feds."

He put an extra cherry in her limocello, trying to figure out some way to calm her down without the use of blunt force trauma.

Cursed by an Italian great-grandmother when he was 6 with unimaginably bad timing, David Rossi chose that moment to call.

"That's him! I knew it! Give me that phone, you redneck punk!"

Her leopard-skinned legs didn't so much fly over the bar as wobble, cellulite hampered by 4" heels. But there was no playing keepaway with Erin. She was quite an Amazon.

Hotchner relinquished the phone.

"Goddamned it, David! How dare you! Who are you spending it on, huh? Huh? I'm gonna call my Uncle. What? what the hell are you---ok."

There was a long moment of silence, then she handed the phone back to Hotchner, one crimson reverse-Frenched claw inches from his nose.

"You'd better do this right!" She slammed the door again and her Lexus squealed away with the 12:13.

"Rossi?"

Between crackling interference and sirens, Hotchner tried to make some sense of the conversation. He got 'someone new', 'southern move', 'damned bitch' and 'later'. His brow lowered. 'Southern move' was Rossi-speak for a chance at Atlantic City.

David was not the most successful wiseguy to work his way from Commack LI through Pennsylvania. He'd wanted to get a nice little turf in Florida and ended up in Richmond with the local capo's blonde girlfriend. That wasn't as much of a mistake as marrying her. The second time. He was, however, an optimist with a eye for the future. Hence his patronage of such new delights as Mistress Emily and her 16 websites of porn and Spencer Reid's chemistry experiments.

'Damned bitch' was obvious, as was 'later' but 'someone new'? That carved a questionmark into Hotchner's forehead for the better part of a grilled cheese sandwich.

Charlie Hankel always said Hotch's home fries tasted much better when he'd tied on a load the night before: that's why he tried to time his deliveries to the Richmond trainyard bar for Saturdays. Hotch was dependably drunk on Fridays and Saturday's fries didn't suffer from the bruised knuckles that hampered Sunday's efforts. Every month, he came up from Georgia with a load of everclear, venison and cut-down Clearwater coke for which Hotch occassionally paid in cash. The home fries were always on the house.

He glanced at his companion. "Almost there."

Her smile was bright summer sunshine. "I could use a stretch. You've been so great, Charlie. Thanks for the ride."

For a moment, Hankel's face resembled Mount Rushmore melting. "JJ? What's that mean, little lady?"

She captured loose hair in a Hello Kitty barrette. "A nickname for Jennifer. We had too many of those at school."

"Well, Jennifer, you sure are a pretty little girl. Why on earth would you be hitchin' along here?"

"I like people." Her smile was a blind. He never picked up hitchers but that smile had made him stop.

"Wish you could meet my son. He hates people."

"Oh, that's probably not true at all. I'm sure he's just shy, Charlie."

For longer than he should have, Hankel believed her earnest blueberry eyes. The truck bounced over rivers of track, kicking up clods of mud as he parked closer to the bar's awning than usual. A lady wouldn't want to get her hair mussed, even if she was wearing combat boots.

[Chapter Two](http://hippediva.livejournal.com/265150.html)


	2. (Do the) Locomotion

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
**Current mood:** |   
accomplished  
---|---  
**Entry tags:** |  [fiction](http://hippediva.livejournal.com/tag/fiction)  
  
_**FIC: Welcome to the Jungle Chapter Two: (Do the) Locomotion**_  
CH. 2: (Do the) Locomotion

TITLE: Welcome to the Jungle Chapter Two: (Do the) Locomotion  
DISCLAIMER: CM belongs to those guys at CBS. I own nothing. All characters revert to canon  
RATING: R through NC-17  
PAIRINGS:...Prentiss/Hotchner, Hotchner/Elle, Hotchner/JJ, JJ/Garcia, Garcia/Lynch, Prentiss/Garcia, Reid/Morgan, Morgan/Prentiss, Reid/Hotchner, Rossi/Strauss, Tobias Hankel/Reid, Frank/Prentiss, Morgan/JJ, (do you want me to go on or would it be easier to list the pairings that aren't?)

This is an ALTERNATE REALITY fiction! Canon has been fed through the Fargo wood-chipper, is being reflected in funhouse mirrors, and narrated by a chorus of Timothy Leary devotees.

[Chapter One](http://hippediva.livejournal.com/258865.html)

Hotchner's eyebrow practically hit his hairline.

"You sure you're alright there, Charlie?"

If there was anything less characteristic of Hankel than picking up a hitcher, it was enjoying a woman's company. Christ, he was even creepier when he tried to smile.

Aaron turned his attention to the girl, suddenly aware that he hadn't changed in three days. His jeans were tight. Having a bar between him and any blonde was an obstacle to overcome, even if it was his own bar.

But little Miss JJ didn't seem to be the impressionable type. Something chilly lurked under all that Maybelline cornfed pretty.

His jeans got tighter and Charlie laughed.

"So you just decided to stop here?"

She looked even more like one of those damned big-eyed kiddie pictures Aunt Rhea had plastered all over the Staunton family home. "Charlie said it was a great place and I need a break."

Hotcher's eyes narrowed. "Not that far from Georgia. Or New Orleans."

For a half-second, there were cool explosions in neon blue behind her eyes. Then she grinned, spinning on her stool like a kid.

The grill behind him sizzled. He'd figure her out later. At the moment, Charlie's home fries needed his attention and the place was getting crowded with the Sat. Night regulars.

He needed help, even if it looked at him with lying eyes.

"Fine. Take the bar."

He knew he was a bully. She was barely half his height and built like a friggin' bird.

She also caught the opener, the bottle AND the rag without blinking, then jumped over the bar. He could be pardoned for enjoying her athletics much more the ex-Signora Rossi's: she jiggled only in the right places.

He went back to Charlie's fries, unaware that in 3hours and 22 minutes, just in time for the 12:16 Westbound, strange things would be afoot and he would be in no position to stop them. In fact, it would be all his fault.

  
Spencer finally dragged himself out of his stupor. There were no more lollipops, the attic was dark, and his dick was hard.

He was starting to jones.

When not on the nod, Spencer could move quickly, if disjointedly. Like a frantic giraffe, he ransacked the room for anything he'd stashed, his extraordinary mind focusing like a laser. His 24x38's hung on him like a pair of deflated windsocks and his lip thrust out into a deprived pout. Then, he sniffed at the air. Home fries meant Hankel meant Hotchner was in the back.

He took the front staircase.

"Oh you are so damned adorable!" JJ giggled, mid-pour. She spun the vodka bottle, tossed it over one shoulder, caught it and measured out exactly one jigger. One smooth move, like a Vegas showgirl.

"Girls don't like me." Spencer muttered from behind the bar. Hotchner never ever let him back there and he took every kind of advantage of the cargo pockets on his flapping pants.

"Don't be silly. And don't slip."

She managed fourteen orders and both ends of the place's only real heirloom: a horseshoe mahoghany bar with a lot of post Civil War obscenity carved into it.

Spencer found the stash and shouted, Charlie belched, the music changed from Stones to Thin Lizzy and somewhere in the back, the first fight began to brew.

Gideon rarely budged from his stool way at the end of the bar. There were rumours Hotchner had superglued him to it. But even he rose as the vibe, without Aaron's threatening presence, got ugly.

Knife-fight ugly.

In fact, there were already a couple of small pools of blood by the pinball machine.

The lights all came on at the same time as the music stopped.

Three pops as though someone was squeezing the hemorroids out of Orville Redenbacker.

"CUT IT OUT!"

Hotch was very sure, poking his head in from the kitchen, that he was going to pop out of his jeans.

Nothing like a blonde with a .44 to make his heart jump.

Spencer had fainted and Hotchner deftly removed the pilfered packets from his pockets. "Hope you didn't hit anything serious."

Emily poked her head up from the dungeon, black hair clinging to her forehead. She brandished a riding crop decorated with High School Musical cell phone charms.

"Can you do that again? My client'll pay extra."

Aaron hauled Reid over his shoulder and grinned at JJ.

"Take it. He's a senator with assassination fantasies. He loves it when she yells in Arabic." He jerked his thumb over Spencer's skinny behind. "I guess you've got things under control here."

Charlie said the fries had never tasted so good. Somewhere around 10:15, everyone was happily plastered. Fights were confined to thumb-wrestling (Hotcher kept a stock of splints around for weekends). Who wanted to get shot by a cheerleader? That would take more explaining than gunfire, death, mayhem or any other criminality.

Upstairs, Garcia and Kevin were refreshed and she was monitoring her feeds. The music downstairs changed dramatically and she was drawn like a moth to the flame of curiousity that would suck her into the strangeness of a night she would later describe as "Hotchner's Moving HellHole".

A cracked, yet pleasing tenor voice.

A static-rippled pignose amp.

A pilfered microphone.

The caterwauling roused the hackles on even Kevin, forcing him to don his robe. Garcia's pigtails quivered.

As he dumped Spencer into the broom closet next to Ms. Em's dungeon, the hair on Hotchner's arms rose.

In his semi-conscious state, Reid heard howling. He would have werewolf sex dreams for weeks once the concussion wore off.

Jason Gideon was singing.

_"Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah  
Roma, Roma-ma  
GaGa, Ooh la la  
Want your bad romance_

I want your ugly, I want your disease…..

  
Outside, the trains' whooping whistles screamed, the patrons drank and the guy at the other end of the bar sat quietly, sucking down a strawberry milkshake.

Hotch headed towards the cellar stairs: even above the din upstairs, Em's whipcracking Saturday night special was echoing through rooms that knew the sound from the Civil War. He was about to head back upstair when a whiff of Dioressence stopped him in his tracks.

"Think you can get by, Aaron?"

Her voice was liquid velvet and sent all the blood in his body to the boiling point right between his legs. Her fist was anything but soft and cracked against his ribs, sending him into the wall.

He spun and blocked her knife with his left arm, baton already extended.

They circled each other, eyes gleaming in the jungle under the traintracks.

Heat poured off her, golden skin and eyes like a raptor, claws extended and hooked into his back.

"Where the fuck have you been, bitch?" he growled.

"Busy." Her teeth worked along his neck.

_"I want your love and I want your revenge  
I want your love, I don't wanna be friends…_

She was psychedelic silk under his hands, one long leg wrapped around his hip. Always devoid of underthings, the smell of her stuck in his nose.

"Fuckin' Christ, what took you?"

Night hair in his fingers and electricity where her nails tore ribbons into his shoulder.

She was smart enough to remember where he'd left that furniture pad : it would save getting concrete burns. Her trenchcoat tumbled to the floor and he ripped at the bodystocking with her own knife.

Upstairs, the bass pounded in time with Ms. Emily's strokes while Hotch did doubletime, shoving hard. She enveloped him, thighs like vises. A long time back he learned not to try to eat Elle: she'd almost snapped his neck. Her long legs buckled, taking them both down to the mat.

"I want your psycho, your vertical stick…"

A little ways beyond the sodden furniture pad and Em's senatorial punishments, Spencer roused from a werewolf fantasy, opened his jeans and pulled out a dick that would have made John Holmes jealous.

Especially since it was finally hard.

Dreaming of Hotchner backsiding him into the bar, Spencer used both hands.

Sticky-sweet and wet, Hotch had twin handfuls of buttock, pumping into her so hard she gasped and cursed. Their lips met, spilling blood and profanity.

Reid sighed, long lashes fluttering like angel wings to the eyes that watched from the cellar window above him.

Gideon bellowed, _"Walk, walk, fashion baby, work it, move that bitch crazy…"_

Frank slurped.

And Penelope and Kevin listened to it all, eyes bouncing like sing-a-long balls from screen to screen.

  
TBC (Sooner than this chapter, I promise!)


	3. The Look of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek Morgan escorts il patron to the bar. More karaoke, guilt, kidnapping and dirty dancing

Hotchner staggered back into the bar, poured himself a pint of Jack and glared.  "Dammit, Frank, will you order a drink like a normal person?  I'm not running an Ice Cream Social."

JJ winked at Frank: he was such a silver fox.  "See ya, sweetie.  He's gonna park the van in the lot out back, okay?"  Hotchner grunted into his glass.

She wiped down the 'GRANT IZ a KATIMYGHT" carved down the middle of the mahoghany. "They're your regulars.  You look like hell.  And stink like Dior.  Go get a new keg outside."

&lt;i&gt;'Everybody was kung-fu fightin'&lt;/i&gt;

Jason whimpered  "So predictable!"  and took a header back into his pretzels.

Hotchner watched the back door slide open, Elle's shadow swallowed in the rain like a bad Chandler cliché.

"Beer, Hotch!"  

For a nanosecond, he stared only to discover that JJ's eyeballs were wearing angora over gasjets.

And the same thing inside him that made him emerge from the cellar every Saturday night torn to shreds and unsatisfied; the inner Aaron (who was still 16 and thought 'Ace of Spades' was a lovesong) got all misty around the edges.

He fetched the beer and gulped down a few raindrops.  

It was pouring like to beat Noah all the way down to Memphis.  He leaned back against the wall, pale Virginia rain sluicing down his throat and got tangled in his lashes.

Some fucker was squatting next to the cellar window, hands cupped, watching.  

"Get the hell outta here."

The bearded kid…funny, he was a kid, wasn't he?…bolted.  Hotchner squinted after him, glanced at Reid, fully visible through the fogging glass, both hands wound around that giant pole of his.

Sometimes, Aaron wished he could just choose a track.  Any track.  

"REID!"

Even through the thunder, he heard Spencer squeak.  

  
Hotchner had half a mind to toss Reid out in the rain for an hour.  It would serve him right for attracting peeping weirdos. He headed to his bathroom, kicked aside three weeks of laundry, and squirmed out of his sweatshirt, grimacing.  Like going ten rounds with a goddamn buzzsaw.  

"I need a life."  He didn't say 'wife' but he was thinking it.

Downstairs, the rafters that had once greeted the Grand Army of the Confederacy with hookers and cardsharks stopped rattling with shouts of 'Sweet Caroline'.  Finally.  

  
Penelope Garcia liked a nice car.  She wasn't a connoisseur and she didn't turn up her nose at stashing all her equipment into Em's practical Sienna.  But she knew a cherry ride when she saw one.  

The caddy that pulled up in the rain was very pretty even in the grainy security camera view.

"Oh, be still my heart!"  she gasped.  

A vision got out of the caddy to flip open an umbrella and escort his passenger to the door.

"Mr. Rossi is here."

But Penelope wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to David Rossi's hangdog face.  She was enthralled by the dark god beside him in the shiniest sharkskin suit south of Perth Amboy NJ.  

Derek Morgan cleared a path to the bar for 'MISTAH Rossi' and JJ smiled up at them, ever the hostess.  

"Well, who are you?"  Rossi's mild gaze betrayed nothing and she waited for him to nod.  "Anisette.  Please."  

  
Garcia's lip quivered along with her pigtails as Morgan leaned over the bar into full view of camera #64.  She put a red rose sticker on the monitor and blew him a kiss, then got busy uploading the footage of Elle and Hotchner in the basement.  

"He should get into the business!  Damn!  Look at that!"

Kevin grinned over her shoulder.  "I'd pull muscles I don't know I have.  Why not put it at Hole-in-the-Wall?  They like that homemade gonzo crap.  JESUS H!  Is he ever gonna come? I don't think she can keep that leg up there much longer."

  
Aaron pulled on a fresh black sweatshirt and went to greet il patron while the introductions were interrupted by the seventeeth round of 'Livin' on a Prayer'.  

"Karaoke, Hotch?"  Rossi was well-aware that Elle Greenaway had been by---he caught her act on Saturdays at the Surly Stripper Lounge and she'd been late.  Again.

"What?"  Hotchner's browridge always seemed to get a bit lower after one of his Elle-nights and his grunt was barely a word in any language.

"Aaron, you need a wife."

He groaned.  "Like you do?"

David looked benign:  he almost smiled and changed the subject.  "I like the karaoake.  You've got quite a crowd.  Is Reid ready for a job?"

Hotchner nodded.  "Let go of my ears, Dave."

JJ, listening to every word with the hearing of a 14 year old girl in a gym locker, watched Morgan watching Rossi and trying to talk with his hands.

Apparently, Derek was the sole Chicago gangster with a burning desire to be Tony Soprano, an ambition that suited his employer perfectly.  

Hotch gulped down the better part of his pint, one eye on the crowd, the other on the blonde behind the bar.

"She's new, too, Aaron.  A girl tending bar?"

"A girl with a .44."  

"Ahhh.  Sounds like your type, pally."

Hotchner's lip curled.  "Very funny, Dave.  Speaking of wives, yours is making a lot of noise."

Normally, Rossi looked more or less like a mild-mannered hound; a little jowly, a little bleary around the edges.  But the mere mention of his ex froze that sad-eyed look completely.  One brow arched in a speculative gaze of a Renaissance privateer.  Or maybe a Pope with an army.  

"I know.  Sta bene.  Fuggedabbadit."

That meant Rossi had a plan.  "Fine.  Just don't keep me in the dark."  Hotchner picked up the slack at the south end of the bar with a rag.  Guilt did wonders for his work ethic.

Morgan, who'd been trading trash talk at the bar with all and sundry, grinned at JJ.  "Should I give it a go?"  

Who was she to deny that kind of body a stage?  "Something danceable?"

"Well, hell yes, inamorata mia.  Damn!" Morgan's gumba act crumbled a bit in the face of hot blonde. "You are fine. girl.  What's you're pleasure?"

JJ poured him Haig and Haig on the rocks and thought about it for a moment, looking up with deceptive baby blues.  A song would give her ample time to let David Rossi know she was in position.  It was her speciality:  Ex-First Wives and Partners Removal. She was very good at her job and came highly recommended by the St. Louis dons.

She giggled and stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear.  

Strings plucked pizzicato heartstrings amid Richmond rain and a torrent of beer.  Derek Morgan strode to the mike.  His suit made a perfectly acceptable disco ball and the speakers blared 80's trumpets.

&lt;i&gt;"When your world is full of strange arrangements, And gravity won't pull you through."&lt;/i&gt;

Hotchner stifled a groan.  "Fuck.  Reminds me of my damned prom!  Where'd you dig him up, Dave?"

"Cicero."

"That explains a lot."

Charlie Hankel extended a hand to JJ.  "If you please, Miss Jennifer.  I'd like the honour of this dance."  

She gulped and smiled up at him, a sunrise apart from the beer and blood and Jason Gideon snoring with a pretzel stick up his nose.  "In these boots?"

Hankel's craggy features seemed ready to suffer a 9.3 earthquake if refused and she liked to dance as much as any other girl.

Rossi lounged against the bar running one manicured fingertip around the rim of his anisette.  "Mamma mia!  Our very own Fred and Ginger, no less!"

&lt;i&gt;"If you judge a book by its cover, then you judge the look by the lover."&lt;/i&gt;

Hotchner opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind and poured himself a large plain seltzer:  Jack and dancing jills never did mix well for him.  Rossi glanced at him sidelong.  

"Who knew Charlie could cut a rug like that?"

&lt;i&gt;"Me, I go from one extreme to another."&lt;/i&gt;

They were, indeed, very good and the bar's crowd cheered when she dove off the tiny 'stage' area into his arms.

Hotchner growled over the rag, eyes fixed on his new bartender's very tight butt.  "I didn't put Baby in any corners!"

Rossi's olive oil smile spread across his thick face: they shared a regrettable weakness for blondes.

&lt;i&gt;That's the look, that's the look.  The look of love."&lt;/i&gt;

  
Meanwhile, Tobias Hankel was squatting in the rain in front of the cellar window again.  This time he had Spencer's attention and pointed to the hammer in his hand.

"I can get you out of there!"

Reid couldn't hear a word but when Tobias held up a syringe, he was in.  He shoved his dick back in his pants and got to his feet.

&lt;i&gt;"Yippee ai yippee aiay"&lt;/i&gt;

  
Miss Em sent her mazo senator off into the night with his chauffeur, took her shower and was ready to turn in, but she loved that song.  She'd been a goth in high school with a closet crush on Martin Fry.  Hurriedly grabbing something simple (in this case vinyl.  With chains and 4" heels), she slipped into the bar from the back stairs.  

&lt;i&gt;"The look of love."&lt;/i&gt;

Rossi turned and she smiled, all brunette beauty and ladyluck with a danger zone the size of Nona's lasagne.  

&lt;i&gt;"The look of looo-ooove.  Look of love."&lt;/i&gt;

"Sancta Maria!  La Bella Donna!"

  
JJ could not believe that she and Charlie had done that lift.  Twice!  Once from the stage and once from the end of the bar.  Panting, she laughed up at him and was the only person in the place who didn't cringe when Charlie smiled back.

"You shoulda been on our cheerleading squad, Charlie!  Wow!"  she giggled.

"Miss JJ.  Thank you kindly!  I've had the time---"

She shook her head.  "Charlie don't.  Please.  Two clichés a scene is all I'm good for."

  
Hotchner closed up for the night shortly after Charlie had taken himself back on the road.  Apparently, he had danced himself sober enough to drive.  The rain subsided to a chilly drizzle, the trains' screaming more hollow as he locked the front door and went down to the basement.  

"Has anyone seen Reid?"


End file.
